Gov. Walker: U.S. should ‘look’ at building a wall along Canadian border

Gov. Scott Walker has been losing ground in the Republican presidential race,and lately has tried to stem his fall in the polls by plowing the same ground as GOP front runner Donald Trump.

On Sunday, after discussion of Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Walker suggested that the United States should “look at” a wall along the 4,000-mile border (or 5,500 miles if you count the boundary with Alaska) between the U.S. and Canada. The U.S.-Mexico border, by contrast, is 1,900 miles.

Any such wall would be erected across a land boundary with America’s greatest trading partner: More than one-third of Canada’s gross domestic product involves trade with “the States.”

And there are the logistics: Not only would a wall have to run along the 49th Parallel, and the St. Lawrence River, but it also would need to “protect” the Alaska-Canada border from the Arctic Ocean to the world’s highest coastal mountains: 18,008-foot Mount St. Elias sits on the border with Yukon. In the Northwest, the water boundaries of Haro Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca would need to be dealt with, along with the North Cascades.

On “Meet the Press” Sunday, host Chuck Todd pressed Walker: “The most famous incident that we had of terrorists coming over our border was on the northern border. Why aren’t you talking about securing our northern border?”

“Some people have asked about that in New Hampshire,” Walker replied. “They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago.”

“So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”

(“Millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam, was apprehended by U.S. Customs in 1999 getting off the ferry “Coho” in Port Angeles with explosives set to be used in Los Angeles.)

The Walker suggestion has been greeted with incredulity and some amusement. A rival for the GOP nomination, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, called it a “pretty dumb idea.”

B.C. Legislator Adrian Dix: “The immigration debate is turning into an embarrassment to the Republican Party, and to the United States.”

“Wisconsin is not a border state but it is a northern state: Walker should know better,” said Adrian Dix, a member of the British Columbia Legislature. \”The immigration debate is turning into an embarrassment to the Republican Party, and to the United States.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, hailing from a border state — two major U.S. Interstate highways head north out of Vermont into Quebec — said in a statement: “Gov. Walker simply must be unaware of the economic prosperity that commerce across the northern border brings to the United States.

The only other suggestion of a Canada border wall came last week on — where else? — Fox News. \Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who challenged Trump and was thrown out of a news conference, confronted host Sean Hannity: “So you’re going to do it on the border with Mexico, but how ’bout the 5,000-mile border between the U.S. and Canada?”

“I would do it up there, too,” replied Hannity. “I would do it up there, too.”

But consider some complications:

–The schoolchildren at Point Roberts would have to make a total of four wall-crossings each day in traveling by school bus across lower British Columbia to Blaine:

–The crossings of mighty rivers — the Yukon, Taku and Stikine in Alaska, the Columbia in Washington, the Flathead in Montana, the Detroit River in Michigan and the St. Lawrence — would need to be secured;

–The secured border would need to make provision for the 110,000 animals of the porcupine caribou herd, whose habitat includes two Canadian national parks plus the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

–The Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, along the Montana-Alberta border, would somehow need to be walled or secured.

–Salmon runs headed out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca for the Fraser River would need to pass a security check. Ditto the three pods of Orcas that often populate Haro Strait.

Adrian Dix suggested that Gov. Walker has been watching “Game of Thrones,” but then wondered seriously: “He (Walker) is not the only candidate who has been making these statement As well, “The most of the leading network Sunday morning show asked repeatedly about the Canadian border.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “it reflects a racist, pernicious debate about immigration. It is a debate not limited to the United States.”